First, when we ask how mature capitalism is in today's world, we are
inquiring into the degree to which conditions for its transcendence have ripened.
There is an understandable tendency to believe that the pace of evolution speeds up
from one epoch to the next. Thus, in a famous quip that scandalized the Hungarian
officialdom of the 1950s, Georg Lukács remarked: "It took six centuries to get from
feudalism to capitalism; so it will take six decades to get from capitalism to
socialism." We can note the foreshortening assumption at work here. In fact,
preparation for capitalism occurs in the form of small "plankton blooms" of proto-capitalist relations as far back as the ancient world -- witness Aristotle's
characterization of "service for hire" (wage labor) as "unnatural acquisition," in the
Politics. These prefigurations, going back thousands of years, did not have the
critical mass to become self-sustaining, as the underlying conditions for that
transition were not yet in place.

The transition to socialism, in turn, has roots in all periods of history. As
Gramsci's work makes clear, it requires an entirely new kind of hegemony, and
therefore must rest upon a long historic development of organizational, cultural
and intellectual capacities in the working class. It also requires a political, self-conscious transition unlike any that came before; the late Herbert Aptheker
emphasized this reversal, in which the political envisioning precedes the economic
transformation, rather than following and legitimating that transformation.5 All of
this suggests that the preparatory process for lasting socialist transition, and the
associated maturity of world capitalism, may in fact be quite drawn out, in
comparison even with the several nested cycles of preparation for the emergence of
capitalism -- in contrast to the "six decades vs. six centuries" conception.

Second, to understand the evolution of capitalist social formations from
shaky infancy to healthy adolescence and youth to painful maturity and senility, a
new approach to the stadial -- stage-relevant -- aspects of capitalist accumulation
must be sought. The Marxist tradition offers a rich variety of materials for this
search. The Bauer-Kautsky-Lenin-Hilferding-Bukharin generation proposed a
"late" stage,6 called variously imperialism, finance capital, monopoly capital.
Transition from early to late in this conception rests, in some unspecified manner,
on the concentration and centralization of capital, and the stages are apparently
identified by means of descriptions of capitalist institutions, as we observe their
development. The state-monopoly-capitalism formulation, central to Communist
Party thinking and ignored or deprecated outside of that circle, produced a rich and
important literature, but also in the descriptive mold. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy
dropped the qualifier "state" (see their Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review, 1968),
in order to differentiate themselves from "state monopoly." Their monopoly stage
is based on the demand constraint, and aligns with a variety of stagnationist
positions (Steindl, Minsky).

Outside of this stream, Western Marxist literature gave rise to Regulation
Theory and the Social Structures of Accumulation position, both attempts to
ground stage theory in a succession of regimes, or social contracts. Fordism and
post-Fordism are central moments in this approach.7 The Uno school, which takes
its inspiration from the Japanese Marxist Kouzo Uno, proposes to separate three
levels of analysis: Principles of the pure capitalist economy, Stages theory, and
Historical analysis. Uno theorists thus turn the strict separation of stages from the
theory of accumulation as such into a matter of high principle; their stages, usually
Mercantilism, Liberalism and Imperialism, are therefore almost programmatically
deprived of a foundation in theory, and remain, from the point of view argued here,
essentially arbitrary and untheorized.8 Finally, this brief survey should mention
concepts of stages based on use-values -- i.e., railroads, automobiles, electronics,
each determining the features of a stage of accumulation. The problem, of course,
is that "stages" of this sort have no clear relation one to each other, and provide no
basis for anticipation of the number and character of stages that might succeed;
this is, once again, an abandonment of explanation in favor of historical
description.

The challenge is to move in the other direction: precisely to provide a
theoretical foundation for the stadial component of accumulation theory, i.e., to
avoid what John Willoughby has called "theoretical adhocery." This huge
undertaking is just one component of the even larger synthetic task outlined above,
and I will not try to characterize or envision its outcome in this small space. This
essay ends, therefore, not with an answer, but with a challenge: to bring all of the
studies -- capital, nation, state, class -- together, to bear on each other and on the
central issue of the present stage of world capitalist development. Despite
neoliberal dominance in today's post-bipolar world, recent years have witnessed an
unprecedented upsurge of opposition to the current forms of globalization. This
resurgence of popular and working-class struggle, uniquely international, diverse
and connected, is the beginning of a genuine counter-agency, and the historical
materialist project in the present arises from and serves that broad movement.
What we understand more fully, we might also be able to challenge most effectively.

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IN THIS ISSUE

Tensions between short- and long-range objectives, between the needs of working-class and revolutionary organization, on one hand, and broad alliance building, on
the other, are inherent in all periods of movement building and struggle, and can
only be overcome through debate among different tendencies. Moreover, it is
important to grasp the specifics of the tensions and resulting debates among
different positions in particular geographic and historical settings, despite the fact
that the core elements transcend these particularities. Leftists in Latin America
have debated goals and strategies in that continent's specific conditions, as
recounted in Steve Ellner's study of "Leftist Goals and the Debate over Anti-Neoliberal Strategy in Latin America." Ellner identifies three broad streams in the
Latin American discussion, as exemplified by the work of Jorge Castañeda, Marta
Harnecker, and James Petras. His presentation of these streams and their cross-interrogation offers a useful basis for re-examination of fundamentals -- especially
the relation among anti-neoliberal, anti-imperialist and pro-socialist goals, and the
problem of the gains and losses from alliances with centrist political forces.

Part of the ideology that worships the "free market" is the totalizing and one-dimensional conception of market (commodity) relations that is central to capitalist
thinking. In his article, "Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent
More than Market Relations," political economist Costas Lapavitsas examines the
distinction between commodities and gifts, referring both to foundation concepts
from political economy and to the rich literature on this distinction within cultural
anthropology. Opposing a rigid and binary version of this distinction, according to
which market relations are essentially devoid of the qualitative and evaluative
dimensions associated with gift-giving, in both pre- and post-industrial
revolution contexts, Lapavitsas argues that gift-like aspects of economic interaction
persist into present-day capitalist exchange, and in fact are essential to a full
understanding of the social relations of power and reciprocity, which take the
outward form of market relations. Lapavitsas' invocation of the complex dialectics
of commodity and gift is an important contribution to theorizing the rich and
textured nature of exchange and exchange-oriented social forms.

Next, we offer a contribution by Japanese Marxist economist Kiyoshi
Nagatani, who has an extensive body of work in Japanese but has not yet been
widely published in English. The opportunity to correct this lack is provided here
by Nagatani's intervention into the debate over the status of Marx's theory of value
and exploitation between Gilbert Skillman and Paresh Chattopadhyay (S&S, Winter
1996-97; Summer 1998; Fall 1999). Nagatani associates himself with
Chattopadhyay's critique of Skillman, who finds Marx's attempt to ground the
theory of exploitation in labor value equivalence to be incoherent and
unsustainable. He nevertheless feels that Chattopadhyay's argument did not go far
enough in laying sound foundations for development of Marx's categories of value
and exploitation, in a way that completely answers the charges of the skeptics.
Nagatani writes in the tradition of the Uno School (referred to above), but also
seeks to make his own contributions to the development of that tradition.

Finally, the issue contains a continuation of the Europe-Asia (or
England-China) discussion among Ricardo Duchesne, Jack Goldstone, and R. Bin
Wong (S&S, Winter 2001-02; Summer 2003); here Wong returns with a new,
more nuanced formulation that tries to get to the heart of the differences ("Early
Modern Economic History in the Long Run"). Ajit Sinha offers a review of the first
20 years of a scholarly Marxist journal, Research in Political Economy. And
Richard Wolff -- a leading activist in another journal of the left, Rethinking
Marxism -- reviews the new book by Andrew Levine, A Future for Marxism? As
Wolff's title ("A Future for Marxism or a Retreat from Marxism?") suggests, the
distinction between forward and backward directions is by no means obvious or
uncontested, and post-Althusserian, Analytical and other Marxisms will continue
to wrestle with this central problem, and with each other.

D. L.

___________________
5. See his pamphlet, The Nature of Freedom, Democracy and Revolution (New
Century, 1960).

6. Ernest Mandel used the term "late capitalism," which has the advantage of
not foreclosing on the principle underlying the early/late distinction, but
might also be seen as an end run around the need to nail down that principle.
In fact, the notion that the current stage is "late," if not "the highest," already
contains a conclusion that is not warranted by an underlying theory.

7. For a useful introduction to these schools, see David Kotz, "A Comparative
Analysis of the Theory of Regulation and the Social Structure of
Accumulation Theory," Science&Society, Spring 1990.

8. A useful recent compilation, with a major orientation from the Uno school,
is Phases of Capitalist Development, edited by Robert Albritton, Makoto Itoh,
Richard Westra and Alan Zuege (Palgrave, 2001).